Category: General

Categories and tags are the two default taxonomies that we use at the European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Community website. By design, all posts must be filed under at least one category. As you can imagine, ‘General’ is where we can list almost any topics that is not filed under the other subject headings.

However, some subjects are wide and broad in subject and need to be included in our blog, but don’t quite fit under the existing taxonomies. Hence the ‘General Category’. Content covered can vary from a .NET Runtime for AOT to a SharePoint Conference North America Keynote Summary, Pulse Survey or monthly top SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure resources.

Recap of the European SharePoint Conference 2011 by Wictor Wilen
Recap of the European SharePoint Conference 2011 by Wictor Wilen
Blog Posts

Back home after a few days in Berlin for the European SharePoint Conference 2011. It was a great conference with good speakers and really nice attendees. It was three days full of sessions, expert panels, shoot-outs and SharePoint fun! Thanks to everyone who was there (especially those who came to my sessions 🙂 and the team behind the conference! And as always it great to meet up with the SharePoint MVP’s, MCM’s and now even MCA’s!

Mobile Applications for SharePoint Using HTML5
Mobile Applications for SharePoint Using HTML5
Blog Posts

Access to your business information: anytime, anywhere and from any device.
There lies great potential in mobile applications for SharePoint and a big opportunity for you as a developer!
Microsoft has sold more than 125 million SharePoint licenses to over 65,000 customers. And Tim Cook gave us the following number last week: “92% of the Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying iPad”

You can expect that your customers will ask you about mobile applications if they aren’t already. Be prepared!
Let me just give you an example. Take the original SharePoint desktop and mobile version of a “Task list” on an iPhone:

Yes, It's Time for a SharePoint App Store by Steve Gaitten, Director of Online Operations at Bamboo
Yes, It’s Time for a SharePoint App Store by Steve Gaitten, Director of Online Operations at Bamboo
Blog Posts

I enjoyed a well-considered article from Global 360’s Derek Weeks today on CMS Wire. Derek asks, “Is it Time for a SharePoint App Store?”

It’s a great question, and one that many of us have been asking for years, with only one obvious answer: “Yes!” But perhaps the more important question is, “Who can deliver it?”

Derek says, “As millions gained access to SharePoint from IT organizations that deployed it without an explicit strategy, its out-of-the-box experience often left them disappointed.” In my opinion that statement is obvious and not even remotely controversial. It reminds me of some old creative concepts I had developed for Bamboo that never quite made it to market

Sanlam cut contract generation time from hours to minutes
Sanlam cut contract generation time from hours to minutes
Blog Posts

Independent investment and derivative structuring division of one of South Africa’s largest financial services groups, Sanlam, replace their manual process of generating Investment Fund Policy Contracts with Document Automation solution for SharePoint

Qorus Software, an innovative IT company focused on development of document automation software for Microsoft SharePoint, today announced that Sanlam Structured Solutions (SSS), a division of one of South Africa’s leading financial services groups, Sanlam Life Insurance Limited, are using Qorus DocGeneration in their SharePoint environment. Sanlam Structured Solutions (SSS), which designs and provides structured investment and retirement solutions for the institutional and retirement fund industry, are using Qorus DocGeneration, Qorus’ flagship document generation solution for SharePoint, to reduce the time required to generate their investment fund policy contracts

The Role of Governance in Migration Planning
The Role of Governance in Migration Planning
Blog Posts

In a CIOUpdate.com article entitled Prolific SharePoint Sites Undermine Governance, technology writer Jake Frazier outlines a common problem with the growing number of SharePoint customers: the uncontrolled growth of SharePoint sites, and how it impacts governance. SharePoint is proliferating in the marketplace, with KMWorld reporting SharePoint licenses at over 130 million worldwide. The more sites that are created and the more content added to your environment, the more difficult it can be to change course, correct mistakes, and implement a governance model. But the business value to having a formal governance model in place is enormous. As Mr. Frazier points out,

“To accomplish the defensible disposal of information, including information in SharePoint sites, companies must put in place and enforce a record retention policy that recognizes the three major reasons to keep information: business value, regulatory requirements and legal holds.“

Toxic Personalities: Preventing the Spread of Confidential Information
Toxic Personalities: Preventing the Spread of Confidential Information
Blog Posts

Enterprises from all backgrounds have heard the social media call. Breathless marketing executives presented the C-suite with crisp PowerPoint presentations showing case studies that encouraged them to reap the benefits of being open, social and transparent. That forced true change, with the C-suite altering practices and asking for more social activity and collaboration throughout the organization.

There’s only one problem: the whole idea has the security folks tied up in knots. The key challenge here is that as employees communicate openly with customers, partners, prospects and competitors, private and otherwise proprietary information within content management systems and on hard drives may leak out. And for many companies, a serious breach has already happened, as evidenced by recent headlines of significant fines that organizations such as the FTC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and others have imposed.

What is the Start Point for Business Process Automation By Eben Illingworth, Nintex
What is the Start Point for Business Process Automation By Eben Illingworth, Nintex
Blog Posts

Finding the right starting-point for business process automation is always a challenge, particularly when keeping the budget low is a priority. BPA (Business Process Automation) becomes profitable when a high volume of processes are automated, but how do you get to that point quickly to maximize ROI?

The Human Resources department is the answer. HR processes by their very nature are common to all employees so the processes you choose to automate there will reach the largest audience and return the highest value.

Some great processes to start with are:

Digital Signatures for Document Workflow and SharePoint
Digital Signatures for Document Workflow and SharePoint
Blog Posts

As business-critical processes continue to make their way onto SharePoint, they create an increasingly prevalent need for secure, legally-enforceable, and manageable automated signature capability. This is due in part by the fact that, without a digital signing capability within SharePoint, paper is introduced into otherwise automated processes each time the need for a signature authorization arises, thus creating the need to print, manually route, track, and archive paper documents. In addition to increasing organizational costs and inducing process delays, this reliance on paper hinders the enhanced efficiency and collaboration companies seek to achieve via SharePoint.